INTRODUCTION
Before this project, Utah and
eastern Nevada lacked dendrochronologically crossdated,
site-specific fire and vegetation histories to provide
information needed for scientifically based fire, land, and
natural resource management in this region. Historical data are increasingly
viewed as essential to assess the need for active management of
different vegetation types (for example, whether fuel treatments or wildland
fire use is needed) and for justifying management actions
within agencies and to the public. Fire regimes
(frequency, size, and severity) vary across space
and through time in response to
factors such as vegetation types, landscape physiography
(e.g., elevation and topography), and longer-term climate
change. While 20th century records can help us
understand the effects of recent fire exclusion on factors
such as forest and fuel structure, we must look over longer
time scales to better understand the influence of
various forcings, such as climate changes and human land use, on
fire occurrence and behavior. Our three-year study
was funded by the
Joint Fire
Sciences Program, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fishlake
National Forest, and the Bureau of Land Management.

RESULTS
The
project began
in the summer of 2002, with pilot funding provided by the Fishlake
National Forest. We completed analyses of data from 16
sites that span ecological and climatic gradients present in the region along
with three smaller units that were collected to address specific management
issues (Figure, Table). Within each of the larger sites, we
systematically sampled tree-recruitment and fire-scar data
within plots located on 500 m grids that span ranges of variation in topography and forest type. At
each plot we used n-tree density-adapted
sampling to characterize forest
age structure, composition,
and tree density. We sampled additional fire-scarred
trees as well. We sampled a total of
over 13,000 trees in over 400 plots located across a broad range of topography
and 17 different biophysical settings ranging from sagebrush
steppe to spruce-fir forests.

PERSONNEL
Emily K. Heyerdahl is a
Research Forester at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory,
in Missoula, Montana. Her research focuses on
understanding climate forcing of
historical fire regimes across western North
America. She has worked closely with forest managers in
developing local fire and forest histories across a range of
forest types in the Pacific Northwest, the southern-interior
of British Columbia, the US northern Rockies, and the Sierra Madre Occidental of
Mexico. She is an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser
University. Email: eheryerdahl [at] fs [dot] fed [dot] us.
Stanley Kitchen is a
Research Botanist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, Shrub Sciences Laboratory,
in Provo, Utah.
He has a deep knowledge of the ecology of Utah's forest and
woodland ecosystems. Relevant research explores species
and community level responses to various disturbance factors,
including fire, in shrublands, woodlands, and dry forests of
the eastern Great Basin. He is also manager of the Desert Experimental Range and RMRS
Station Coordinator for the Region 4 Research Natural Area
Program. Email: skitchen [at] fs [dot] fed [dot] us.

Peter M. Brown
is Director and President of Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring
Research. A major emphasis of his current research involves reconstructing fire history, fire
climatology, and forest dynamics in forest of Colorado,
South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, and California. He
is an Affiliate Faculty member at Colorado
State University, the University of Idaho, and the
University of Arizona. Email: pmb [at]
rmtrr [dot] org.

Marc H. Weber
was a Biologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire
Sciences Laboratory, and was the principle research support
for the project.

SOME
PHOTOGRAPHS

Emily Heyerdahl cutting a cross section from the catface of a stump. Two
parallel cuts are made across the area with the best scar record followed by
plunge cuts to remove the partial cross section.

James Riser sawing partial cross sections from a snag. Note that he is
cutting two sections from opposite sides of the catface to obtain the most
complete records from this tree. Almost all of the cross sections we
sampled were cut from dead trees.

Stan Kitchen at a bristlecone pine in the Escalante Mountains.

Brandon Collins and James Riser coring trees in the Mytoge Mountains near
Fish Lake. Brandon is using the power increment borer setup and James is using a
bent borer handle to sample the trees at about 10 cm up from their bases.

Stan (kneeling without a hat) and Emily (in
purple) ooking for sites in the Mytoges, early summer 2003.

At the top of the Meadow Creek transect on Paunsaugunt Plateau, just around the
corner from Bryce Canyon National Park.

The crew on Boulder Mountain, August 2004.

We came across the most amazing piece of field gear on the Abajos transect.
Quite the view of southern Utah for an nice afternoon break.